Down to the wire : confronting climate collapse / David - Index of

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gulags, death camps, ethnic cleansings, killing fi elds, and mutual
assured destruction, the 20th century appears rather like a passage
through Hell. Looking ahead to rapid climate destabilization, the
loss of perhaps a quarter to half of the species of life on Earth, and
the widening gulf of poverty and living standards, we see that it
may not have been a passage at all but a road toward the abyss of
extinction. But it is a mistake, I think, to regard the possible suicide
of humankind as an anomaly rather than the logical outcome
of a wrong turn that now must be quickly undone.
For all of its complexity, the essence of the issue of sustainability
was put by the writer of Deuteronomy long ago: “I have set
before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose
life, that thou and thy seed may live.” No previous generation
could make that choice as fully and fi nally as we can. We have the
choice of life and death before us, but now on a planetary scale.
One might expect that this choice would have been a matter
of considerable interest to mainstream Christian denominations,
but with a few notable exceptions they have been, in scientist
Stuart Simon’s word, “sluggish” to recognize such issues. 1 Were
they members of a fi re department, they would still be pulling on
their boots as the ashes cooled. The same could certainly be said
of other religions as well as other institutions, including those of
higher education. But the problem of religion in America relative
to the choices we face about the possibility of our own extinction
is particularly important because of the close historical connection
between Christianity and capitalism, which has been the
engine of planetary destruction, and because of the rapid growth
of an extreme branch of Christian fundamentalism that intends
“to transform the church into the religious arm of conservative
Republicans” and thereby “hijack faith and politics,” in the words
of liberal evangelist Jim Wallis (2005). The late Jerry Falwell, along
with Pat Robertson, James Dobson, megachurch minister Rick
Scarborough, Ralph Reed’s Christian Coalition, the Southern
Baptist Convention, and James Kennedy’s Dominionists, have